A Bug's Life - Our Shed

By: Glenn Torrens, Photography by: Glenn Torrens

Date: 22.12.2023

It has been three slow years for Glenn Torrens' backyard-bought VW Beetle. But now the pace is quickening!

My little brown 1968 VW Bug was resurrected in my garage, from a bargain-buy, bare body to a cheeky ‘outlaw’. With its tatty swagger and twin-carburettor big-bore 1916cc VW motor, backing the boast of the door roundels, I’ve entered several weekend/club motorsport events, from Cooma in the NSW Snowies to Gunnedah in the north.

The Cooma hill-climb is on the road to Mount Gladstone lookout, at the south-western edge of the town. The hill-climb at Gunnedah, in north-western NSW wheat country, also runs up a local lookout road. ‘Gunny’ also hosts a go-as-fast-as-you-can 800m sprint on its airport runway, sometimes on the same weekend as the hill-climb. Racing Saturday and Sunday … That’s a great weekend!

My most recent track-attack fun was at Taree Airport on NSW’s mid-north coast. This event was established just prior to three years of disaster: bushfires, virus and floods. Happily, in 2023 the local Mid-Coast Drag Racing Association hosted two 1/8th-mile drags.

Although I rebuilt it to be fast, this Beetle was never meant to be a ‘race’ car. I built it as a fun and well-sorted performance street car, to be enjoyed then sold, to help finance my real race car; an almost-finished tarmac/hill-climb 1975 VW Superbug, as I mentioned here last year. 

My mate Kyle’s Plymouth Cranbrook, my Bug and another mate Nathan’s turbo V8 powered HG Holden, at Taree Airport Drags. Being beige is not always about being boring!

Unfortunately, Covid kind-of messed-up my plans (as it did for many people!) so now, three years later while towing the Bug home from the Taree event, I realised I should get back to the original plan: sell this and reprioritise the completion of my ‘real’ race car … Again.

Something I’d planned but not done with this brown Bug’s resurrection three years ago was a minor restyle. In the early 1990s when I began playing with VWs, the cool kids in the ‘California Look’ VW scene fitted headlights from a Porsche 911. I’m usually not a fashion-victim for things that don’t actually make a car faster/better but when it comes to VWs, this very subtle Porsche styling tweak is something I like. Plus, yeah, the 911 lights do work better!

My resurrected Outlaw Bug fitted with the ‘layback’ headlights from the first Bug I built, in the 1990s. I also relocated the indicators from the guards to the bumper for a smoother profile.

To be installed on my 1968-model car, the Porsche headlights required older front guards to be modified to accept my car’s bumpers. I cut ‘n’ shut a pair of guards with a bit of cutting, fiddling, welding and grinding.

Then I had the guards media-blasted to bare and after applying a lick of primer, a bit of body filler and some yummy paint, I was able to replace the standard but crappy front guards I’d hastily fitted in 2018, to get my Bug ready for registration. That completed the facelift! 

The 1968 VWs have different bumper mounts to earlier years, so to fit Porsche headlights, I had to modify early guards to fit my later-model car.

My Bug’s modified VW engine has Weber carburettors. A couple of times recently it has suffered a fluffy idle. After a decade of using Webers, I’m reasonably confident of their inner workings so it didn’t take me long to discover an internal blockage. But inside the carbies, I found some light corrosion too. I don’t use ethanol fuels in my older cars (E-fuels are troublesome for many older cars) so I’m not sure what the cause is. No matter what, I don’t think this car’s lack of use (just 12 days last year) is doing it any favours, either.

Yes, I need to drive it more often! 

Nooo, actually, I must sell it so I can free-up some garage space and dollars and finish my proper, VW Super Beetle motorsport car.

From Unique Cars #485, Nov 2023

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